Casey: PA Can't Afford To Maintain Health Care Without Federal Help

Sen. Bob Casey speaks at the Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., on Friday, June 23, 2017, during a health care rally.

Gov. Tom Wolf
/ Flickr

Lawmakers in Washington are still reading through the finer details of the Senate GOP's new healthcare bill, but opponents are already warning it’ll give states an impossible choice—either cut services, or spend billions more on healthcare.

In a visit to his home state Capitol Friday, Pennsylvania’s senior U.S. Senator Bob Casey called the bill “obscene.”

The Better Care Reconciliation Act, as it is formally known, would significantly roll back federal Medicaid spending by capping cost growth, starting in 2021.

Casey, a Democrat, said that’s disingenuous, because the commonwealth doesn’t have the money to make up for federal cuts.

“You’ve got states across the country, including Pennsylvania, that have to balance their budget,” he said. “What the Republicans are doing are just washing their hands of Medicaid, sending it back to the states and saying, basically, it’s your problem, state government.”

“Any federal legislator who votes for this bill and says, oh I didn’t cut Medicaid, I just sent it back to the states—that whole argument…is deliberately misleading,” he added.

Some of the steepest cuts would be to the commonwealth’s Medicaid expansion, which covers 716,000 lower-income people statewide.

The state could opt to keep up the coverage, but Wolf administration officials have said the costs would be astronomical—likely more than $4 billion.

The commonwealth is currently facing a roughly $3 billion structural deficit, and is struggling to find revenue to balance its budget, which is due this week.

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Pennsylvania's Democratic Sen. Bob Casey is in the state hammering the Republican health care bill in the U.S. Senate.

Casey, speaking after a Friday rally in the Pennsylvania Capitol, warned that the bill would change society radically because the country will stop taking care of people who need it most.

Casey and others say Pennsylvania stands to lose more than many other states. Also against it are Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania's hospitals, the Arc of Pennsylvania, the AARP of Pennsylvania and labor unions.